>>24849811 (OP)
Their way led now through dwarf oak and ilex and over a stony ground where black
trees stood footed in the seams on the slopes. They rode through sunlight and high
grass and in the late afternoon they came out upon an escarpment that seemed to rim
the known world. Below them in the paling light smol ered the plains of San Agustin
stretching away to the northeast, the earth floating off in a long curve silent under
looms of smoke from the underground coal deposits burning there a thousand years.
The horses picked their way along the rim with care and the riders cast varied glances
out upon that ancient and naked land.
They rode onto the plain at dawn as the judge had said and that night they could see
the fire of the Mexicans reflected in the sky to the east beyond the curve of the earth.
All the day following they rode and all that night, jerking and lurching like a deputation
of spastics as they slept in their saddles. On the morning of the third day they could
see the riders before them on the plain in silhouette against the sun and in the evening
they could count their number struggling upon that desolate mineral waste. When the
sun rose the walls of the city stood pale and thin in the rising light twenty miles to the
east.
